Episode 107: Winning at Business and Life with Matthew Green

This is Professor Pete Alexander with the Winning at Business and Life podcast, where business leaders share their insights. It is 6 questions in 7 minutes because successful business leaders are busy and rarely have more time to spare. So let's get to it. Question number 1: In a few sentences, please tell me who you are and what you do.

Yeah, perfect. My name is, uh, Matthew Green. I'm the chief revenue officer of a company called Sales Assembly based here in Chicago. And what we do is we're a collaborative-based learning platform and a community for over 130 of the nation's biggest B2B technology companies. So essentially we provide ongoing training, resources, education development for sales, marketing, and customer success teams of companies like LinkedIn, Upwork, Glassdoor, etc.

Matthew, it's so great to have you on the show. Question number 2: What's the best thing about working in your industry?

I'd say the best thing about working in the industry and specifically with this organization is the community in and of itself. Being able to surround myself with an impressive Rolodex of stellar revenue leaders from all across the spectrum. These are revenue leaders sales and marketing leaders from extremely exciting and nimble early-stage venture-backed technology companies, but also sales and marketing leaders from some of the most prominent brands across the country. Again, organizations such as LinkedIn and Salesforce, and giving me and the other folks that are involved in the community the opportunity to continuously learn from the stellar group of people is amazing and something I never thought would be possible.

Yeah, the variety that you get must be really something, I would imagine.

Absolutely.

Question number 3: I have a fictitious book with all the answers for business. What chapter would you think most companies should read?

Uh, the chapter that dives deep into making the right hires, because who you surround yourself with in any business I think is going to be critical to not only the short-term but the long-term success of the business from a metric perspective, but also from a cultural perspective, making sure that you're building the right type of organization that other fantastic people are going to want to be a part of. Mm-hmm.

And I would think that on the opposite, if you hire the wrong person, not only does that create stress in the organization, but it can affect the culture as well.

Absolutely. And in many cases, especially for early-stage companies, companies that are relatively young, making one bad hire is probably the best way to destroy your business quicker rather than later. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

That's very insightful. Question number 4. Other than the generic work harder, have a great attitude and care for customers, what advice or insight would you give to other business leaders?

I'd say sort of Going back to, uh, to the point about the chapter in the book is making sure that you surround yourself with people that are smarter than you, which in the case of me isn't very hard because I'm not that smart to begin with. Um, but I think that everybody needs to build their own personal community of thought leaders, of peers, of mentors in all different edges of the spectrum. So myself, even though I work in a mainly sales-focused environment, I like to surround myself with people who are experts in their field related to things like finance and operations, things that at least at first glance might not have a whole lot to do with sales, but they have helped me develop as both a person and a professional in a much more comprehensive manner.

Very well said. And I love the concept of surrounding yourself with people who are smarter than you because That means that, you know, you're not worried about somebody taking your job or anything. It's just all about getting the job done in the best, most efficient way. Am I reading you correctly?

100%. That's absolutely it, both within your organization and outside your organization, making sure that you're surrounding yourself with people that, you know, in any way that you want to quantify it, are better than you in some way, shape, or form, because that's the only way that you're going to win. Mm-hmm.

That's great. Question number 5. What other business leader like yourself would you like to acknowledge and invite to be on my podcast?

Yeah, I think it'd be fantastic to have a woman named Christina Brady, who coincidentally is a woman who we just hired to be our president at Sales Assembly, on the podcast. Christina, a little bit about her background, but she spent the last 10 to 15 years building and leading high-performing sales teams, most recently with an organization called Glassdoor. She's hired and trained hundreds of high-performing salespeople and sales leaders over the course of her career. But more importantly, she has a really impressive and inspiring personal story that I won't share too much about here. I'll let her speak to that, but it helps inform how a lot of people think of her as a professional in the industry.

Wonderful. Well, thank you for that referral. I'll reach out to her. And our final question, question number 6, please tell me about your first job.

Yeah, my first job, um, God, way back when I was a kid, was, uh, delivering newspapers. Um, started that I think when I was around 11 years old. Um, and I took the opportunity to essentially double up on, on the, um, on the schedule. I mean, delivering the, the weekday newspaper, delivering The Sunday newspaper, waking up early at 3:30 AM when I was 11, 12, 13 years old wasn't extremely exciting at the time, but it taught me a lot about the importance of hard work, the importance of prioritization, and the importance of essentially making a big commitment. When, as silly as it sounds, a lot of people, especially back in the day of delivered and physical newspapers, people relied on you to be informed. Formed. Yeah. So it taught me a lot about, about business and life in general.

Yeah. And you brought me back to my first job as well. Same thing, a newspaper. I now tell people, you remember the newspaper? It was, it was that thing that would you do a printout of a web page.

Exactly. Yeah.

Oh, so Matthew, thank you so much for being on the show. How can people find you?

Yeah, people can find me on LinkedIn, of course, or I invite anybody who's watching this, anybody in general to email me directly. My email is matt@salesassembly.com. I'm in the business of building meaningful relationships. That's a big part of what Sales Assembly does and a big part of why my partner Jeff and myself love running this organization. So I invite anyone who's interested in connecting with me to feel free to reach out at a moment's notice. Perfect.

This is Professor Pete Alexander with the Winning at Business and Life podcast. For more insights and ideas, please go to LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, or iTunes and search for the Winning at Business and Life podcast. Thanks for listening!